This page is an achive listing milestones, progress, and
events associated with the MaNIS Project.

11 Jun 2001

A joint TDWG-CODATA
Working Group meeting on Biological Collection Data Access was
held at NCEAS to develop a common specification for distributed
collection data, and to develop a common software architecture to
support distributed queries across collection databases and portals.

18 Jun 2001

The goals, objectives, and georeferencing methodologies for the
MaNIS project are introduced at the 81st Annual Meeting of the American
Society of Mammalogists. See Summary.

Town Peterson, Curator of Birds at KUNHM, formalizes collaboration
to georeference central African localities for the MaNIS project.

4 Jun 2002

John Wieczorek is an invited participant in the Scientific and Technical
Advisory Group meeting of the GBIF Digitization of Natural History
Collection Data Subcommittee (DIGIT).

5 Jun 2002

Raúl Jimenez-Rosenberg of CONABIO formalizes offer of a georeferencing
collaboration with the MaNIS project for Mexican localities.

16 Jun 2002

First demonstration of MaNIS as a functional DiGIR network (two collections) at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists.

16 Jun 2002

Jerry Choate, Curator of Mammals at the Sternberg Museum of Natural
History, formalizes collaboration with the University of Kansas to
georeference western Kansas for the MaNIS project.

27 Jun 2002

John Wieczorek demonstrates the MaNIS network (three collections) as an
invited participant in the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group meeting
of the GBIF Data Access and Database Interoperability Subcommittee (DADI).

16 Jul 2002

Stan Blum demonstrates the MaNIS network at the Joint Conference on
Digital Libraries in Portland, Oregon.

2 Aug 2002

John Wieczorek demonstrates DiGIR and the MaNIS network at a meeting
of the Berkeley Natural History Museums (BNHM), the Information Center
for the Environment (ICE), California Environmental Resources Evaluation
System (CERES), and the Association of Biological Collections at UC Davis.

24 Sep 2002

Reed Beaman hosts a Georeferencing Workshop at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Research Center to discuss emerging technologies and to coordinate development efforts. Geolocate, MaNIS, BioGeomancer, and the California Academy of Sciences Arcview Georeferencing tool are all demonstrated.

17 Oct 2002

Working meeting of DiGIR developers is held at the Taxonomic Database Working Group (TDWG) meeting in Indaiatuba, Brazil. DiGIR is proposed as a possible standard for database interoperability for TDWG and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

21 Oct 2002

John Wieczorek and Reed Beeman give a joint presentation on Collaborative and Automated Georeferencing of Specimen Data at the Key Innovations in Biodiversity Informatics Symposium in Indaiatuba, Brazil.

26 Oct 2002

The Bell Museum (University of Minnesota) agrees to participate in collaborative georeferencing, and MMNH localities are added to the gazetteer.

12 Jan 2003

MaNIS is mentioned in a front-page story on virtual museums in the Sunday New York Times.

1 Feb 2003

Assessment of georeferencing to date reveals that 52.2% of the work load has been done using 49% of funds alotted for that purpose in the first 47.2% of the grant period.

18 Feb 2003

MaNIS is demonstrated, by Stan Blum, as the first implementation of a DiGIR network at the DiGIR Installation Workshop, San Diego Supercomputer Center, La Jolla, CA.

The MaNIS network goes into testing phase among the participating
institutions. 8 collections are online.

21 June 2003

Reed Beeman gives a special presentation
entitled "Georeferencing Natural History Collections" at the "Use of Digital
Technology in Museums" Workshop for the Society for the Preservation
of Natural History Collections in Lubbock, Texas.

21 June 2003

John Wieczorek demonstrates MaNIS and discusses DiGIR in a special presentation
entitled "Distributed Databases and Applications" at the "Use of Digital
Technology in Museums" Workshop for the Society for the Preservation
of Natural History Collections in Lubbock, Texas.

22 June 2003

The MaNIS Workshop is held as part of the program for the Meeting of the
American Society of Mammalogists in Lubbock, Texas
(abstracts). MaNIS makes its public debut. Ten collections are online.

31 Jul 2003

MaNIS is featured in a News in brief article in Nature. Eleven collections are online.

19 Aug 2003

The last of the geographic regions for georeferencing is claimed. Data validation and standardization for georeferences is begun at the MVZ.

27 Feb 2004

The Moore Foundation requests a concept note describing a project to automate georeferencing and establish georeferencing standards based on the MaNIS georeferencing Guidelines and BioGeomancer. The Concept Note was sumitted to the Moore Foundation on 23 Mar 2004. The official call for a proposal came on 27 May 2004 the proposal was submitted in October and the eighteen month project was funded for $1.635M with a start date of 1 Jan 2005.

Apr 2004

The MaNIS georeferencing guidelines and the IJGIS paper resulting from
them are used as the basis of the "Manual de Procedimientos para
Georeferenciar", a georeferencing manual published by the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad
(CONABIO).

1 Jun 2004

MaNIS georeferencing activities are featured in a special issue of D-Lib magazine on georeferencing in digital libraries.

13 Jun 2004

The Berkeleymapper mapping capabilities have been integrated with the MaNIS portal and demonstrated and the ASM meetings in Arcata.

MaNIS is identified as a potential resource for invasive species information. The Heinz Center’s State of the Nation’s Ecosystems project, in
collaboration with Dr. Tom Stohlgren, Science Program Director at the Fort Collins Science Center,
is conducting a review of existing non-native species databases in the United States. This effort
is part of the Center’s work on the next edition of the State of the Nation's Ecosystems report
(http://www.heinzctr.org/ecosystems/), scheduled for publication in 2007, and will support work on
identifying a consistent set of national indicators for describing non-native species.

23 Sep 2004

Barbara Stein presented a talk at the Fifth Biennial PEET conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign entitled, "MaNIS: An example of data integration in a distributed network environment".

13 Oct 2004

Pam Allenstein seeks information on the costs and logistics of the MaNIS project in an effort to establish a distributed network for the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta, representing nearly 500 public gardens.

18 Oct 2004

Mark Costello of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) seeks
cooperation and open dialog in the establishment of georeferencing standards and gazetteers.

02 Dec 2004

Jessica Theodor of the Department of Geology, Illinois State Museum,
seeks NSF workshop funding to improve awareness of data sharing network
technology among the paleontology community. MaNIS is asked to be represented
in the workshop.

16 Feb 2005

Emily Ashley of the New York Botanical Garden announces a project to
georeference Brazilian specimens using the MaNIS Georeferencing Guidelines
and Georeferencing Calculator.

Linda Hill, retired Director of the Alexandria Digital Library Project, included references to the MaNIS Georeferencing Guidelines in two chapters of her book in preparation on georeferencing to go to MIT Press on 1 April.

01 Aug 2005

Barbara Stein and John Wieczorek present a poster on MaNIS at the
Ninth International Mammalogical Congress in Sapparo, Japan.

05 Sep 2006

Best Practices for Georeferencing (Chapman and Wieczorek, eds.), based on MaNIS Georeferencing Guidelines, published by GBIF.